When It Is
by lemonjelly
Summary: "But a heart proceeds so sadly / when it is, when it is, when it is afraid to live." - Kath Bloom. A series of encounters and distances between CJ and Kate. Covers Season 6, 7 and beyond. Chapter 6: "CJ seems stunned by the questions, stunned to see Kate at home with her shirt untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Blonde hair all loose."
1. Chapter 1

This piece began, in part, as something fuelled by my desire to ignore my finals and by excessive listening to Kath Bloom's album 'Thin, Thin Line'. I'm not sure why watching season six for the second time has suddenly struck me with such a strong urge to read and write CJ/Kate. There is just nothing about these two characters that I don't like. But I'm pretty sure there aren't many reading things like this anymore.

This is a non-linear collection of events that sort of form a cohesive story that is not in a strictly chronological order. For the most part, please take each new section as a snapshot or memory.

* * *

 **When It Is. **

**1.**

" _But a heart proceeds so sadly  
when it is, when it is, when it is afraid to live." – Kath Bloom_

After Bartlet, the Secret Service detail is, much to her relief, pulled from trailing CJ Cregg. She drops by Josh Lyman's place once in a while, and grins when she sees him rolling his eyes at the security procedures that dogged her throughout her time as Chief of Staff.

When Kate walks along the halls of CJ's apartment block, she's struck by the absence of those dark-suited figures by the front-door. It reminds her, with an almost sickening jolt, just how long it's been since they were together, and when she knocks on the door and CJ appears, she can see on her face that that same jolt ran through her too.

"Kate." she says, and maybe she sounds surprised, or maybe she still just sounds tired. "Come in."

Kate does, but only so CJ can close the front door. She won't go further than that; she steels herself, she keeps her resolve.

There are cardboard boxes scattered around the living area, most empty but some labelled in CJ's writing – _"Kitchen misc.", "Electrical"_ – in that haphazardly ordered, impenetrable way of thinking Kate had almost forgotten in her.

"CJ…" Kate starts. She is not here to catch up.

"Sorry for all the chaos," CJ waves a hand around the room and the way she talks is so breezy, so flippant, it makes Kate shiver. "I probably won't even need half this stuff in Santa Monica, and it'll just stay in these boxes gathering dust. Moving, huh? I think that's probably the main reason I stayed in DC all these years. Not so much for the President, but because I just hate packing."

"CJ." Kate can't take listening to her talk aimlessly like she's talking to other people. CJ's head snaps up to her, guilty. Kate says, "I'm taking a position overseas."

They are not, they never were, just other people.

CJ says nothing for a while, just stares at her, as though waiting for more, as though she'd forgotten Kate never says more than she has to. And when CJ does speak, it's one of those rare moments where she stumbles on words – "What? I mean – overseas where?" As soon as she says it, sees that look on Kate's face, she knows she won't get a straight answer.

"Well, I'm still holding out for an ocean-view room in the Bahamas, so we'll see." Kate says, and CJ wonders if Kate picked up that smart-ass way of avoiding a question from her, or if she's always been this way.

CJ sighs. "How long for?"

"Indefinitely…"

"And Will?" CJ says.

Kate almost laughs. "We really haven't spoken in a long time, have we?"

There is a pause. CJ squeezes her eyes shut, pressing her fingers into her temples. When she opens them again to look at her, the next thing she says falls from her mouth like it's the first time she's realised it herself: "I'm marrying Danny."

Kate's jaw stiffens slightly. She jerks her chin up in a firm half-nod, and the sunlight slants over her high cheekbones, her fine features. For a brief moment, CJ's mind conjures the memory of that face on her pillow, remembers waking up to a crisp first light in the summertime, and stroking her fingertips lightly across that cheek. CJ's palms twinge at the memory of how they'd covered every inch of her body, but she snatches her hand into a fist, and Kate only says – "Yes. I heard."

CJ sighs another long sigh. "Look – I don't know how – "

"You know, I really just came by as a courtesy thing. I didn't want you to wonder if you couldn't get hold of me sometime." Kate breezes past the lost end of CJ's sentence. This wasn't what she came for – for answers or an argument. "Congratulations, CJ. Take care of yourself."

"Kate – "

She's already opening the front door. She's already stepping out. CJ grabs her arm without knowing what she could say to stop her. She feels Kate's muscles tense under her touch and, for a second, CJ thinks there were tears in her eyes. But when Kate looks back, she is resolute.

"CJ, you know this will be much easier for the both of us if we just pretend that there was never anything there at all."

The first time they meet, it is not fireworks, not a riveted, longing gaze across a crowded room. CJ thinks that they probably shook hands but even so, she cannot say for sure. Maybe they passed each other on the way out of the Oval Office. Maybe she'd been hastily introduced at some point in the busy hallways.

The first time Kate really caught CJ's attention was actually a time when Kate wasn't even there – when CJ had gone along to apologise to Donna and instead found Josh ranting in his office after being caught in a lockdown with some infuriating new Deputy NSA. CJ had marvelled at this woman's ability to rile Josh Lyman, knowing full well that what truly drove him up the wall was when he knew he was wrong but unable to admit it. He said her name – "Kate." – with hard edges, hurt pride, and CJ had resolved to meet her properly.

Kate had made CJ smile before they'd even spoken a sentence to one another and, later, when CJ says her name, in the months and years after watching Josh fume, it's softer. When she says it in that particular, low timbre – maybe in the semi-light, as a quiet groan in her ear, maybe accompanied by elegant hands plucking open her shirt– it's the single most arresting sound Kate's ever heard.


	2. Chapter 2

**When It Is. **

**2.**

Toby doesn't really need extra reasons to be pissed, but he'll take them anyway, bristling slightly when he hears about the new NSA's bright ideas on Israel-Palestine. He grumbles in his office when CJ sticks her head around the door.

"It's like taking a cab to the last mile of a marathon and then sprinting the rest of us to the finish."

But CJ waves him away in that carefree way only she can pull off with him. "Oh, Toby – you're such a grouch, you know that? You don't like newcomers, and then you don't like it when you get newcomers who leave."

"Well, Will had one foot out the door from the start," he mutters. "I'm just saying – we're heading into the sunset here. We made it this far, and now we're supposed to be listening to the ideas of those who have just joined us for the final lap?"

"You're into the running analogies right now, huh?" CJ says, as a last ditch attempt to talk Toby down, but Toby doesn't hear her – he just keeps on:

"We have a process, we have a plan we were following. She's been here a week and she's trying to school Leo on how to handle Palestine."

"Toby." CJ cuts in then, because it's not enough now to just poke fun and brush him off. "In case you hadn't noticed, we're not striding majestically into our winter years, we're limping it. We've got – what? A Republican majority? The deficit? MS? You think that was part of the plan and process? We're losing focus here, and if someone new comes in with an ambitious suggestion that might actually placate the Middle East for even a week, I think it'd be a damn stupid idea not to take it."

Toby shuffles his feet on the ground and CJ breathes for a moment, holding a strong stare. Anyway, she'd liked Kate's idea, and had fought alongside her in the Oval Office. It had been exhilarating almost - the first time she'd felt that in a long while. Kate's had been the only bold, bright voice in a room full of people so tied down with seven-year burdens. It had stirred something in her: the will to fight, to take a chance. And after spending the last few months patching up compromises and scraping through each day there was this – CJ wanted this.

"It's a damn stupid idea no matter what," Toby says. CJ shrugs her shoulders, she thinks of how Kate's eyes burnt as she spoke, of how The President had stopped to listen, and she turns on her heels to leave.

"I don't think it is." she says.

"Thank you," says Kate, and she's keeping pace with CJ's long-legged stride through the halls. "I was sure I was the only one."

"If this had been a few years ago, you wouldn't have been," CJ says, side-stepping an intern carrying a stack of files half his height. "It's been tough – especially these last weeks."

"I think I got off on the wrong foot," Kate narrowly avoids an assistant rounding the corner.

"Don't let that worry you," CJ says, and for a while has to almost shout over the noise of phone ringing in the bull pen. "It's not you. The guys have just lost a bit of their passion, I think. But it won't last. You need to keep speaking your mind – it's what the President needs."

"And you haven't?"

CJ nearly stumbles over a stray chair rolled out between hive of communications desks. She frowns a little, confused. "What?"

"You haven't lost your passion?"

When they make it back to outside CJ's office where it is relatively quiet, CJ's natural response comes back as swiftly and smoothly as she would've done with any of her reporters – "Oh please, honey, I'm all passion."

And then she pauses for a moment, feeling the jet stream from those words in her mouth and realising too late that Kate wasn't one of the guys from the Post who could be thrown off by a casually flirtatious comment. Somehow, CJ thinks, this – flirting with Kate – sat differently with her. Kate's lips twitch a little in a smile and a curious glint flares momentarily in her eyes.

"That's… good to know." Kate says. CJ feels a heat start to rise in her cheeks and she is horrified to think she might actually be blushing.

"Get a drink with me later?" CJ says suddenly, and recovers, waving a hand back at the way they came, saying: "With all of us, I mean. You should get a chance to actually know the guys a bit more, get out somewhere a bit less hectic."

The look she gives CJ is lingering, considering, and CJ wonders if her face is noticeably red, wonders why it happened at all. Kate nods slowly. "Okay," she says.

CJ grins, breathes – "Okay."


	3. Chapter 3

**When It Is.**

 **3.**

Sometimes Kate is packed off and sent to a different part of the world: Israel, Taiwan, London. Sometimes Kate is gone before CJ even realises and, when she does, she has to remind herself to let go. And when CJ first notices the way Will looks at Kate, she feels a surge of animosity, but controls it and turns away.

Sometimes, when CJ is watching Kate getting dressed, or pouring out two glasses of wine, she'll say, "You're beautiful, do you know that? There will always be men falling all over themselves to take you out. If I can't promise you anything, maybe you should just go with that."

And Kate says, "Okay." And sometimes she says it like she's pissed, and sometimes she says it because she just wants CJ to stop talking about it all the time. One time, she says it when she means it, and she lets Will Bailey take her out, lets him fumble a kiss onto her lips before she turns to hail a cab.

She thinks – this man is so good with words, so terrible with people. CJ is good at both; CJ never misses a beat. So sometimes she goes to dinner with Will, and she lets him smooth-talk her over dessert – but sometimes she turns up at CJ's and neither of them need to say much at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**When It Is.**

**4.**

In later years, CJ might argue that the turning point for her and Kate hinged on the fact that Josh already had dinner plans and Toby had already left. She might say that all that followed would never have happened if they'd all gone out for drinks together like she'd intended. Deep down, she was not so sure. Even within the the first month of meeting Kate, had CJ's eyes not strayed to consider Kate's lips, or watched her walk away for longer than was probably appropriate? And had she not turned on some occasions to catch Kate's gaze wandering the length of her thigh?

When Kate finally finishes up for the night – a Tuesday, in spring – and she arrives at CJ's office, CJ holds up her hands in mock-horror.

"I screwed up," CJ declares. "I didn't catch Josh or Toby in time, so it's just me – do you still want to grab a drink?"

As though she expects Kate to refuse. As though she honestly doesn't realise just how difficult it is for anyone to say no to her.

Kate says, "Absolutely." She feels a glow of warmth when CJ grins, and her mind ticks over.

"This isn't an elaborate ploy to seduce you," CJ says. A joke, yet she feels an unexpected – unmistakeable – tingle sweep through her body when Kate passes her in the doorway – closer, perhaps, than she needed to – on their way out of her office.

CJ doesn't know how she's supposed to react to that – she doesn't even know if she's supposed to react at all – but she does know a quiet little place that isn't full of college jocks and DC businessmen so she takes Kate there. They talk of travel, Bartlet, and underrated restaurants in the DC area. After one drink, Kate's hand brushes her knee and CJ thinks, for a Navy-trained CIA agent, that can't have been an accident. She thinks – surely Commander Kate Harper would be too good with her hands for that. And then she thinks about just how good those hands might be.

After one drink, Kate is beginning to understand – even before CJ does – what that occasional, uncharacteristic rush of blood to CJ's cheeks means. After two drinks, Kate chances to skim her fingertips over the exposed skin of CJ's inner forearm, as though it were a misjudged movement up to her glass. She sees that flicker of arousal cloud CJ's eyes – just for a moment, just before she catches herself.

It is after three drinks that Kate knows she wants to kiss her tonight – a quiet, but clear, thought that arises in the back of her mind. Maybe it was a thought that had begun to form before they'd even reached the bar. Maybe she had always had it in mind. But it occurs to her now in irrefutable clarity, watching CJ's lips move as she talks of Bartlet, good restaurants, and bad first dates. Kate would like to kiss her.

She can't do it here, though, not in the bar. Instead, she picks up her jacket when CJ notices the time and realises it is late, that she needs sleep. They spill together into the empty street and the total absence of life outside surprises them both. Perhaps they hadn't expected to enjoy each other's company so much so that the night would entirely slip by.

Still, huddled together here on the step, Kate does not kiss her then. Instead, she goes to crane her neck down the silent sidewalk, looking for a taxi. And, as she does so, CJ mutters something about the number of a nearby cab company, and rummages for her cell.

It is this precise timing of movements, the exact proximity of them both, that causes CJ's forehead to collide abruptly with Kate's.

"Ow." A pretty loud bash, enough to stun Kate for a moment.

"Oh, god – " CJ lets her purse fall to the floor when she, like a reflex, moves her hand to touch Kate's forehead. "Jesus, Kate, I'm sorry…"

"It's okay…' Kate says. And it is, but CJ's fingers are still pressed to that point of her forehead, and CJ's expression has shifted from immediate concern, to a softer, deeper gentleness. She brushes away strands of Kate's fringe.

"I'm sorry – I wasn't trying to knock you out," CJ says, a small smile on her lips, and she strokes Kate's forehead – just above her eyebrow – with the tips of her fingers. In an instant, it becomes an intimate gesture, and CJ's hand relaxes to cup her palm against Kate's cheek, as though they'd been this close for years. CJ doesn't know why she does this – maybe because they've had three beers, because Kate's been winding her up with stray touches all night. Maybe because she, too, has thought of kissing her – though, again, CJ does not know why. But Kate doesn't move away, so CJ dips her head closer.

Kate reminds herself to breathe, and she manages to quip: "Not an elaborate ploy to seduce me, huh?"

"Funny…" CJ says, but doesn't say much else. She loses the rest of her words, because this is the moment when Kate kisses her.

Kate's lips are soft, and decisive, and in that brief moment, CJ actually feels giddy. Kate's hands move to rest in the small of her back, and she coaxes CJ in closer. CJ kisses with the grace and confidence of a heroine in a silent movie – this is a thing Kate wants to remember. But, she loses the end of the kiss, because this is the moment when the only cab in a three mile area veers around the block and springs them apart with a sudden flash of headlights, a battered old engine.

One of CJ's hands instinctively reaches out into the air to flag it down, the other pulls her coat tight around her chest and then moves to touch her fingers to her reddened lips.

Kate grasps her arm gently as the cab pulls up, because CJ is turned away and Kate doesn't know if she's just overstepped a boundary. Kate says: "CJ…"

And CJ looks at her, a different and strange expression on her face now. "I don't know what to say," she admits. "I'm not sure what that was."

Kate feels very sober now as CJ gathers up her purse and moves towards the waiting car. "I'm sorry," she says.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," CJ says, but she hesitates before reaching for Kate's hand and squeezing it gently – some ambiguous gesture. And though they share a cab, it is in silence until they reach CJ's place. Even then, it is a brief goodbye, a haphazard peck on the cheek, before the driver takes Kate home.

On this night, CJ sleeps and can vividly feel the sensation of Kate's mouth on her own, Kate's hands against her body. On this night, Kate sleeps and dreams of nothing, but CJ is her first thought when she wakes.


	5. Chapter 5

**When It Is.**

 **5.**

Kate calls her from Camp David on the first evening there and instantly wishes she could take back her blurted opening sentence. CJ, by contrast, snatches up the phone and answers it with calm, "CJ Cregg."

"You're not at Thurmont?" And Kate, who never was a nervy love-struck teenager, wonders why she seems to have started now.

But CJ only chuckles whilst Kate mentally berates herself. She can picture the Press Secretary breaking her flow of work to lean back in her chair, the phone cradled between her cheek and shoulder as a smile spreads on her face.

"No, I'm not," CJ says. "I had to stay back to mind the press. You didn't know?"

"I didn't – it's not a big deal," Kate says. "It was busy, I just assumed…"

"I'm sorry – I should've said," CJ says, and feels bad for laughing, feels an awkward tension resonate down the line.

"Oh – no, it's nothing, really," Kate pauses. "I mean – we just didn't get a chance to talk really again after the other evening." She's mediating discussions between Israel and Palestine, Kate thinks. She's championed a key diplomatic event for the leader of the free world. My God, should the world be in these hands that tremble slightly, holding a cellphone to her ear, talking nervously to a woman she kissed?

"Kate…" CJ says, and she must be thinking the same thing. Maybe she's already drawing up new candidates for a more stable Deputy NSA. "Kate, we can forget about it entirely, if that's what you want?"

And Kate laughs, then, because this all just feels embarrassing.

"You know, that would probably be best." she concedes. CJ laughs too – it warms her, though she sounds far away.

"Then let's do that."

.

The first phone call is the only phone call Kate makes to CJ from Camp David, and if either of them notice the absence, it is never acknowledged. Kate spends her free time debating late into the night, and waking up on sofas with the taste of the same old arguments still in her mouth. CJ spends her time on the phone to Josh or to Toby, where she hears that the President and Leo are starting to be a serious concern, that – a big surprise – Will Bailey is actually quite athletic despite his neurotic Carnegie Mellon appearance, and – bigger surprise – Kate Harper is the one holding these talks together.

So, whilst Kate tries to remain a calm voice in a room housing two of the most polarised political groups in the world, CJ keeps the press from battering down her door with tentatively optimistic updates. When Toby or Josh call in the evenings and in the mornings with more news, CJ can't help the grin that crosses her lips upon hearing them talk up Kate.

" _I'm serious, CJ, she's a powerhouse – and I don't know what the hell is making the President listen to some of her ideas, but I think this is the longest we've ever been able to hold civil talks between Farad and Zahavy…"_ Josh says, and CJ is pressing her cell-phone to her ear with her shoulder and rooting in her purse for her White House ID on her way in one morning.

" _We're making more progress than we hoped for. Kate's been good."_ Toby says, and CJ is collating her briefing sheets, just about to call a full lid on the day. And mostly, CJ smiles because she's chancing some hopefulness on these negotiations. Sometimes, CJ smiles because she was right and they were wrong about Kate. A couple of times – driving home, perhaps, or waiting for the coffee machine – she smiles and recalls Kate's lips against hers.

Because forgetting about kissing Kate is easier said than done. And, though CJ has good reason to request a briefing from the Deputy NSA as soon as she returns from Camp David, she probably did not need to bark constant reminders Carol –

" _Did you write it down, Carol?"_

" _I wrote it down, CJ!"_

It's just as she's craning out of her chair, one eye on the CNN reports of the summit, and yelling after Carol to also book a meeting with Leo for as soon as the motorcade arrives back – "And have you set up that meeting with Kate?" – when Kate appears.

"Yes, she did. And sent two follow-up reminders afterwards," Kate says. She is leaning against the doorframe to Press Office with a smile. "I had no idea I was in such high demand."

CJ stalls, caught off-guard, only for a second. Then, like a quick reflex – an automatic response – she starts up again with a better-rehearsed, more fluid opening line. She has a wry half-smile and points an elegant finger at Kate saying, "You know what I like about you?"

But in the moment of saying that, she considers Kate – this patient figure in her room who is waiting, not preparing herself for a response or poised with a notebook and pen, simply waiting and listening. And CJ's words fail her then. They halt in her chest.

What is it that she likes about her? She wonders what the usual end to that piece of standard smart-alec patter might be. Something about her Navy training, probably, about military mystique – that was always a thing she teased Will Bailey with or, if the tone was right, Fitz. CJ wants to say something like that now – she recalls her efficiency, her clipped and considered speech, her Navy uniform (which she'd seen just once but remembered resoundingly). But it's not just that – it's not a one-liner at the Comedy Café downtown. It's Kate.

Kate is more than that; Kate quickens her pulse. Kate speaks five languages, speaks from the heart and, more than that, sometimes she just does not speak. She listens to her – she really listens – a thing so rare that CJ can hardly believe it sometimes, but there it is – Kate, when she tips her head to one side, when her eyes are fixed on her with bright, patient understanding.

"What's that?" Kate says, because she's tipped her head to one side now and she's listening.

CJ starts. She is almost not aware of how long her mind had carried her away for. "Hm?"

Kate speaks deliberately, calmly, "What do you like about me, then?"

Grasping the nearest file on her desk and recovering by distraction, CJ's regular sly grin flashes back: "You know, I like that you could probably kill a grown man with any one object in this room right now. They train you guys in that, right? Office Supply Combat?"

"That'd be correct – I got full marks in Filofax Defence." Kate returns, a long way from the flustered phone caller earlier on in the week.

"You're a woman of many talents," CJ says, rising from her chair to approach Kate. She pauses before she reaches her, however, keeping a distance between them as she perches instead on the edge of her desk. "I wanted to congratulate you on your work in the Summit."

A slight shrug of the shoulders. "It was a lot of long nights, banging our heads against brick walls for a while, but I think we really got somewhere."

CJ shakes her head. "No – you, specifically. The President called on his way back. Said you'd masterminded the whole operation."

And Kate almost looks embarrassed, and briefly glances away before meeting CJ's gaze. "Well," she says. "Who'd have thought that all that time spent in college reading books on the Six-Day War instead of being asking on dates would've paid off."

"I don't see why the two have to be mutually exclusive." CJ's eyes flicker to the open office door, then back onto Kate's expression – soft smile, and very slightly pink-tinged cheeks – assessing how bold she could be.

"I want to see you tonight," CJ says. Because this is a time of celebration, and because CJ has not at all been able to forget about kissing this woman.

And if Kate wants to say, _That doesn't sound like forgetting all about it –_ or something to that effect – then her resolve is betrayed by her heart and her mouth. She says, "Okay." as though it's nothing, and pauses in the stillness that falls between them, then.

Then it breaks, and CJ's snapping back into Press Secretary-busy, and Kate's turning to go, as though their exchange was unremarkable, was not significant.

"Carol, did you get hold of Leo?" CJ's saying, as Kate disappears down the hall, and the sound of this conversation – growing quieter, overlapped by the bustle of the Press Office, as she walks away –will drift eerily back into Kate's head when she hears the news some hours from now.

"No, Margaret says he hasn't been in touch since yesterday."

"Have you tried his cell phone?"

"I've tried – I'll try again."

.

Later that day, they find him.


	6. Chapter 6

**When It Is. **

**6.**

It's late, now; they have been here for hours. CJ watches Josh's feet pace the hospital linoleum. It's a kind of mesmorising repetition that is almost meditative, almost calming, if it wasn't for the fact that she's digging her fingernails into her thighs as she sits and waits in the corridor.

This entire ward of the hospital was cleared when the Secret Service called ahead of the President's arrival, and it is eerily empty and silent with just three of them waiting out here. Was it busy with a bustling indifference when Leo arrived? CJ shudders. She is trying not to mentally calculate the hours he must've been lying out in the woods. Josh keeps pacing and Toby sits beside her gripping his head in his hands, tensing up with each scuff of shoe leather on floor.

"Josh," Toby says, but his voice is tired and gentler than usual. Josh spins to look at him – the halt in his steps snapping CJ out of her trance – and his expression is vacant surprise. "Will you please just sit down?"

Josh looks brittle, like he's shrunk inside his suit and is crumbling. It makes CJ's heart ache – how sick must this man be of pacing hospital corridors by now?

"I'm going to try calling Germany again," he says, and wanders away down the empty corridor, passing Will in the doorway without a word.

Will glances nervously at the disappearing Josh before settling into a seat beside Toby. He hands each of them a cold bottle of mineral water and, whilst Toby nods a thanks and takes a drink, CJ just holds hers tightly until her hands are numb and wet with condensation.

"Any news?" Will asks. Toby gestures at Leo's closed door, his open palm and silence full of all the stunned impotence they feel.

CJ picks at the water bottle label until it has peeled away in shreds. It must have been at least six hours, she thinks. Six hours unconscious in the woods.

There are some things about Leo – some abstract, unordered snapshot memories – that CJ didn't expect to surface first in her head. She wonders, later, why she didn't think of the moving speech he made to the campaign staff just before Bartlet's inauguration, or why she didn't think of his resilient, reassuring presence in the waiting room after Rosslyn. Why not think first of the strongest, noblest shades of Leo's character?

Instead, as CJ sits and waits for news, she recalls the smallest moments most of all: Leo's grin when CJ swept the table with a full house the first time they all played poker in New Hampshire; Leo's voice on the phone to Mallory after they'd spent days travelling the country on the campaign trail; and Leo, instilled with an old-fashioned chivalrous charm, wordlessly handing a shivering CJ his coat one night, soon after she'd moved from Los Angeles, naively underprepared for New England weather.

When President Bartlet finally emerges from Leo's room – an expression of paternal stoicism on his face – to assure them and send them all home, it occurs to CJ that she's left her coat at her office. She stands on the sidewalk, hugging herself by the ambulance bay; she shivers until she spots a cab. And, when the driver asks her where she wants to go, she responds before she even thinks.

Kate lives in an apartment block – the kind with a buzzer and an intercom, and a cold, awkward wait on the front steps. It doesn't fully occur to CJ until she reaches the buzzer – she'd imagined knocking on a door, and it opening to Kate – that she's never been here before. In fact, it only then occurs to her that she's not known Kate for all that long. Why is she here?

But, when she turns back to the street, she realises her cab has already gone, and she still has no coat. And, anyway, none of this changes the fact that she simply wants to see Kate right now, and that's it.

Her voice crackles on the intercom, but she answers almost immediately.

"Hello?"

CJ is silent for a moment and, when she speaks, all she says is, "I'm sorry it's so late."

"CJ...?" Kate's surprise is tangible. A pause. "Come up."

Kate's front door is already open when CJ reaches her floor, and she is hovering anxiously in the doorway, waiting.

"Are you alright? How's Leo?" she says, and guides CJ into her apartment with a gentle hand on her elbow. CJ seems stunned by the questions, stunned to see Kate at home with her shirt untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Blonde hair all loose.

"He's conscious, talking…" she says after a while. Her mind is racing and her cheeks are burning from the cold outside. When she takes a step on Kate's living room floor, her heels sound harsh, too loud, against the wood. She feels suddenly out of place and turns to Kate to apologise – "I'm sorry. It's so late."

Kate's face briefly flickers a pained expression and she speaks softly, "It's fine. Don't apologise. I just didn't expect to actually see you tonight." She reaches for one of CJ's hands and, startled by how cold they are – "Jesus, CJ, your hands are frozen." – grasps both of them in hers.

"I left my coat," CJ says redundantly. "When I went to the hospital. I left it behind. Seems so ridiculous that I rushed out – as though I could help – and there are so many things I should've stayed with the press to cover…" Her mind starts to tick through them, and she almost heads for the door on her tired feet, wanting to get back to the Press Office and get her mind back in gear. But Kate is still holding her cold hands tightly, watching her intently, and the sight of that alone stops her.

"You'll handle it tomorrow. Not now." Kate says, and she pulls CJ's hands to her mouth, warm breaths on CJ's long fingers. CJ says nothing, stares. Her shoulders slacken and the tightness in her muscles ebbs.

After a long silence, Kate becomes aware of the intimacy of it all – CJ's palms turned upward to her lips – and, when she glances at CJ's clouded eyes, feels a pang of guilt. CJ is tired, stressed, vulnerable. Kate drops her hands, and crosses her arms awkwardly over her chest.

"Do you want to sit down?" Kate says. "Do you want a drink?"

There have been, and still will be, many times when CJ takes her by complete surprise, but this is perhaps the most defining of these moments. In the silence Kate lets pass between them, she doesn't expect to feel CJ's lips against hers in a sudden, hungry rush.

But CJ is leaning into her, her hands pulling their bodies close, hip-to-hip pressing Kate backwards into the closed front door. And Kate, who is fast to react and stronger than her, just lets her. It's only when CJ's still-cold fingertips feel for their way underneath Kate's shirt and graze her warm skin, that Kate pulls back.

"CJ?" Kate tips her head to one side and moves a hand to CJ's cheek, seeking out her expression.

CJ exhales slowly, and runs a tongue over her now-warm lips. When she speaks, it's her most confident-sounding sentence since she arrived. "I just want you – right now – if that's okay."

Kate blinks in surprise at the bluntness of it all, and she stares long and hard at CJ, assessing. That cloudiness has gone – her eyes are bright, and focused, darting across Kate's face, gauging her reaction. Then, just as that confidence is about to slip, just as CJ starts to doubt that Kate ever reciprocated her desires in the first place, Kate gives a single, decisive nod of the head and, with strong hands guiding her waist, guides CJ backward onto the arm of the living room couch.

The height advantage has shifted: CJ, perched on the edge of the couch, and Kate – with a curious hunger, a gentle firmness – running her hands down CJ's body to grasp her below her thighs. CJ lets Kate hold her weight in her two hands, and she leans back a little as though to test how delicate her balance is on the edge. She could fall right back, but she doesn't.

CJ has missed this, has never felt this – feeling small enough to be swallowed up. Her hands want to touch Kate's skin, searching for that feeling of warm beneath her shirt, but Kate's hands are surer, move deftly to tilt CJ's head back, just so, for Kate to kiss her from jaw to collar. And CJ's arms go limp.

"Kate." It escapes CJ's lips without real thought.

Kate looks up. "Shall I stop?" she asks, and waits for CJ to hold her gaze, to know what might have changed in those moments. CJ feels the absence of Kate's lips against her throat and sees a steadfast concern in her expression, both noted, with a pounding of her heart.

She shakes her head before finding words: "No, please don't stop."

So Kate dips her head, kisses down her neck, unbuttoning her blouse, pressing her lips to her sternum, slipping bra straps over her slender shoulders.

Kate can imagine CJ as being the kind of woman who'd been skinny throughout her life. The kind that shot up tall at an awkward age and, though she grew into herself, never stood still long enough to put on any weight. CJ's clavicle rises and falls with her hastening breath, and it looks so appealing to Kate that she bites it. She leaves only gentle, fleeting teethmarks on CJ's skin, but it sends a buzz running through her bones, all the way to her fingertips.

A gasp, a groan, "Kate."

CJ has never felt a longing for someone so profoundly and urgently that it seemed to come from her marrow. If she is surprised at first by how primeval it feels, then this is only a very brief thought, overtaken by a fierce need for this woman that resonates through her whole body.

Kate is uncovering layers.

Somehow, in between all this - pulling at shirt collars, pressing lips against each other, anywhere, frenzied - Kate has already unzipped CJ's skirt and left it pooled on the floor. These sensations occur in flashes; CJ is aware of Kate's fingertips tracing up her thigh and tugging at her stockings, Kate kissing a route down her body.

Things that CJ wants to ask for: intensity, closeness, physicality. Kate doesn't need to be asked. CJ braces her bare feet, tiptoes, on the floor, and her breath catches in her throat when she feels Kate's palms placing a delicate pressure on her knees, nudging them apart. For a moment, CJ's eyes lock with Kate's. Kate is knelt between CJ's legs - her eyes darkened. She tilts her head, very slightly, as a question for CJ's pause. But she also runs the tip of her tongue over her lips - full, and flushed, from kissing paths across CJ's skin - and the sight of that causes CJ to melt, causes a throbbing rush of blood.

"Don't stop. Please." CJ says again. And Kate obliges, slipping her underwear to the floor and tasting CJ for the first time.

Kate moves in a rhythm CJ can't tangibly register and, in a rare moment, she surrenders so willingly to a lack of control, purely sensations. CJ grips the side of the couch and her legs are weak, hips thrust towards deft movements of Kate's tongue, letting everything from the day, the long weeks, slide off her. The only things she feels in this moment are these visceral sensations - desire, and pleasure.

"Oh my god, Kate…"

And, when CJ comes, when her brain clicks back in, she is grateful for Kate's hands holding tight to her thighs, holding her steady, whilst the rest of her body sinks back down into the couch, gasping. She lies back, breathing at the ceiling in the semi-dark. As she starts to gather back together, she turns her head to see Kate sit back on her heels, a small smile crossing her face and delicately running her fingers across her lips as though reliving.

There is a softness in that, CJ realises, even in the intensity and suddenness of it all. There is a softness in Kate. That image of Kate: her hair ruffled by CJ's fingers running through it, a look of contentment about her, bare feet and gently lit – this is an image that stays with CJ. It arrives in her mind without warning sometimes - often in the following days, and then on-and-off in the years to come.

When she reflects on this moment later, she'll try not to dwell on the fact that she lay there only for a moment or two more, before re-dressing, apologising, pressing a kiss to Kate's cheek and slipping out of the front door on shaky legs.


End file.
